Healthy Recipes - Holiday Pumpkin Smoothie

This smoothie tastes like Pumpkin Pie in a glass and is super easy to make!

Ingredients:

½ cup canned or roasted pumpkin
½ cup vanilla soy, rice or almond milk
½ cup water
½ cup crushed ice
2 tablespoons pumpkin butter (or 1tbs honey)
1 tsp. pumpkin pie spice
1 scoop BõKU™ Super Food
 
Blend & Enjoy!

Tips to Avoid Holiday Weight Gain

The average American tends to gain 1-2 pounds over the holiday season.  This may not sound like much but most people don’t lose that weight after the season ends, and it just accumulates year after year. Here are a few steps you can take to avoid the extra weight that creeps up on us in between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day. 

Most importantly, be aware of what you eat and how much. Allow yourself to indulge in holiday foods and treats a little, but always in moderation. Eat slowly and savor your food, this aids digestion and makes it less likely that you will overeat.

Make gatherings about socializing and not about food. Have something healthy before a party, like a BōKU® smoothie. Flooding blood with nutrition just before diving in will go a long way toward avoiding over indulgence and give you more energy for having fun! Also, don’t stand around the food or snack while making small talk; get more involved in your conversations and you won’t want to eat to fill silences. You’ll have a much better time and maybe even make a friend or two.

Try to find opportunities for exercise (go for a walk after dinner, take an extra lap around the store while holiday shopping) even 5-15 minutes a day is better than nothing. Try to manage stress by having a buffet style or potluck dinner so you don’t feel overwhelmed, and make sure to take some time for yourself when you need it. Regular exercise will help with this too.

Also limit your intake of alcohol as well as food, and drink plenty of water. Drinks are full of empty calories and may lessen your willpower causing you to eat more than you should. One can also come up with their own creative ways to remind themselves to exercise and eat in moderation. For instance you can wear snug fitting clothes so you can feel them tighten when you’ve had enough to eat, brush your teeth to keep from going back for more food, or leave little notes around the house reminding you to go for that jog.

In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan Rave!

Michael Pollan's 2008 book In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto was his follow up to 2006's The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. The latter remaining #1 on the New York Times Non-Fiction Bestseller List for an astounding six weeks!
That likely means that many people are interested in what Pollan is writing about: the need for people to eat real food

Pollan asserts why food itself needs defending:

"Because most of what we're consuming today is not food, and how we're consuming it -- in the car, in front of the TV, and increasingly alone -- is not really eating. Instead of food, we're consuming "edible foodlike substances" -- no longer the products of nature but of food science. Many of them come packaged with health claims that should be our first clue they are anything but healthy. In the so-called Western diet, food has been replaced by nutrients, and common sense by confusion. The result is what Michael Pollan calls the American paradox: The more we worry about nutrition, the less healthy we seem to become."

This is definitely a message that needs to be spread far and wide to help change people's minds about what is actually food, and what isn't. This is how we can become as healthy as possible.

In Defense of Food can be found at any local brick and mortar or online bookstore and in many libraries.  If you'd just like to learn more about Michael Pollan, his books or to see his ongoing public speaking schedule visit:
www.michaelpollan.com